Riya wants to make her own solar cooker. Which type of mirror should she choose to maintain temperature in the cooker for cooking her food and why?
Answers
Concave mirrors are used in solar cookers. The reasons for using a concave mirror in solar cookers are given below:
Concave mirrors absorb all the incident light and reflect it to a single focal point.
This reflected light is very powerful because it carries a lot of thermal energy. The cooking pot is placed on the focal point where the light is concentrated. The energy is powerful enough to smelt weak metals and melt salt.
This is because they are the only type of mirrors that reflect sunlight to a single focal point.
If we use a convex mirror for your cooker, it will not work since they do not have a focal point. A flat mirror, on the other hand, doesn’t have a focal point; it reflects off all of the incident light on different points which means that it cannot be used to harness solar energy.